Category: Professional development

You may know this blog is a huge fan of the #PracticeTuesday hashtag. I covered it here and follow it every Tuesday at 5 p.m. Eastern on Twitter. The conversation ranges from reminders about handling witnesses . . . Concur. Know what you need to get out of each witness and check it off as … Continue reading Welcome, #PracticeTuesday Blog

When I speak to summer associates, I always tell them they have two jobs: do great work and gain as many opportunities as possible within the employer’s organization, should they end up working there; and study the employer, lawyers and staff, and the overall culture to discern if it’s a good fit for them. Listening … Continue reading Summer-associate advice

Thanks to Julie Schrager, counsel and legal writing coach at Schiff Hardin, for this guest post. I have been desperately trying to find a way to write about exclamation points. I grew up in a time when they were reserved for exclamations: “Congratulations on winning that game!” or “That’s the reason he got that promotion!” Lynne … Continue reading Listening to punctuation

Sean Marotta, an appellate-practice specialist at Hogan Lovells, and Rachel Gurvich, a legal writing professor at the University of North Carolina, have started a new tradition on Twitter: #PracticeTuesday. Each Tuesday night, they launch a discussion on good habits, best practices, and useful tips for law practice. The hashtag for tweets on this topic is #PracticeTuesday. Today (Tuesday, … Continue reading New favorite hashtag: #PracticeTuesday

Last week once again America—or at least American lawyers—celebrated “Love Your Lawyer Day.” See also #loveyourlawyerday on Twitter. Beyond the marketing hype, there’s a good question: What makes people love their lawyers? The first answer is competence. A 2002 study of how the public perceives lawyers found the majority of consumer clients to be satisfied with their … Continue reading Loving your lawyer (part 1)

What do lawyers need to be good lawyers? A project in Denver is investing a lot of time, energy, and resources into answering that question. It’s the Foundations for Practice study, generated by Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers, an initiative of the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System. The background on Foundations for Practice … Continue reading Tomorrow’s lawyers

How do lawyers transfer their knowledge? Lawyering scholars have been talking about “tacit knowledge” since the early 1990s. A recent ABA publication encouraged law students to use their externships and other practical experiences to interact with lawyers and try to glean some of that tacit knowledge via “extensive personal contact, regular interaction, and trust.” I … Continue reading What lawyers say, and what they actually do

Feeling "flow" means being fully immersed in a challenging task, with a sense of energy and enjoyment. Lawyers might find flow when they have enough skilled experience to know what they're doing and encounter a new challenge using their skills, as previously mentioned in this post. The founder of flow theory, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, created a … Continue reading More on flow and listening

A successful summer-associate experience means doing good work and creating good social impressions. Listening skills can help with both. The assignment and the work The most obvious place to talk about listening and work product is in the incredibly important meeting where the senior lawyer communicates the assignment.Here’s a checklist for listening while taking an … Continue reading Listening for summer associates